I am currently working on a personal project of mine which is pretty much installing multiple Garuda Linux desktop environments on the same user with the same home directory. It’s actually been relatively successful, until plasmashell crashed everytime I opened KDE. Anyways, I am not looking for assistance (why I wanted to share this in community). I just wanted to share the melded abomination of Hyprland and KDE Plasma:
I ended up solving the issue by reinstalling Qt and redoing its config files, for anybody else that is doing something similar. In retrospect, it probably would be easier just to have separate users, but I like the convenience. Just thought it was kind of funny to look at
Ya, this is basically why Garuda does not recommend these types of installations. Nice to see you managed to fix things up yourself and did not expect the community to correct the mess you created.
I do actually think that these types of installations are possible, considering that the garuda-<desktop>-settings packages mostly change the /etc/skel directory, meaning theoretically you can combine them into a single garuda-settings package that has centralized settings for all desktops. In the future I would like to work on this more. So far, I’ve managed to get 4 desktop environments to work under the same user, on the same installation (KDE, Hyprland, Sway, i3). There are some conflicts between theming, as to be expected, but I think it would be interesting.
Sure they’re possible, we simply neither recommend nor support these types of installations. The main problem is that newbs don’t necessarily understand how to manage them without creating problems for themselves. Where it really becomes problematic is when providing support on the forum. Users rarely tell assistants up front when opening help requests that they have a non-standard multi-desktop installation.
This can lead to tons of wasted support time when trying to troubleshoot some quirky problem that there is no apparent cause for. Then 50 posts down the road the user finally informs assistants trying to help them that they’ve installed different desktops that don’t play well together.
If you’ve never provided support online before you truly can’t appreciate how maddening this can be.
That’s 100% true, yeah. I’ve never provided support on forums myself but years of lurking and I’ve seen the multi-page forum help threads where important information is finally mentioned in post 127!
I hope in the future I get enough experience with Garuda that I can provide support for other users . I like the idea of a multi-desktop system and maybe in the future I can provide support for multi-desktop Garuda installations.
Another fun project would be a Desktop Assistant that manages installed desktop environments and configurations. Just a fun idea.
It could also be possible have a single ISO and have the user choose the one(s) they want to install in the Calamares installer, similar to EndeavourOS. This would differ in the fact that it would allow you to install multiple desktop environments.
These aren’t requests, just thinking out loud for my own personal projects
And to me it makes no sense. You get use to one desktop with all it’s addons and tools and then switch to another. IMO rather the casual user or production user bad for consistancy / workflow.
A guided step by step guide for GUI (DE) setup would make some sense where it goes “Do you want this ?” and actually shows the change on screen. Covers start menu, panels, themes etc in one go.
Might be more streamlined experience than digging through menus. (However, last thing I want this setup tool to be the only option. )
I would not change the menus. The menus are actually well done on Plasma, 9/10.
. I like the idea of a multi-desktop system and maybe in the future I can provide support for multi-desktop Garuda installations.